(I love these guys)
I’m writing a follow up post to Pokémon Sun partially because when I wrote my last review I was only half way through the game, and I wanted to revisit it as I have now completed it. The other reason is that I really want to keep sharing pictures of Team Skull, who are hilarious.
I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum outside of the end section but you all should know that when you reach the Battle Tree (end game gauntlet thing that every Pokémon game has), you are greeted by both Red and Blue, and are given the choice of which to fight. I admit I fan girl-ed a little when I met them, I do feel bad though, I don’t know anyone who has chosen Blue.
Late/Post Game
Okay, first off the game gets harder, I spent the first half of the game way over leveled but the second half had probably the smoothest level curve I’ve seen in a Pokémon game so far. With the Exp Share on, and the one Pokémon style of playing, I entered the Pokémon league with one over leveled starter, and 5 perfectly matched support Pokémon. It made it an interesting challenge, especially because (minor spoiler) the fire starter is at a type disadvantage for 2/4 of the elites.
The story was pretty linear, plenty of random encounters, arbitrary blocks on areas, and literal markers on your map. Plus that damn Rotom Dex keeps bugging you about the story. And overall was the most JRPG a Pokémon game has ever been. There were plot twists, reveals, secret identities, lore, and a surprisingly robust costume system. The game sped up in second half, with the final island (Poni) being by far the smallest, and you spend your time being rushed from place to place to thwart the bad guy’s plan.
For the record I’m not fully sure what their plan is, they want to open “Ultra Wormholes” to… do something. They released a bunch into the wild, not sure why, they didn’t go fetch them, and then put all their resources to going through a wormhole themselves. Once in the Ultrabeast dimension, they… sorta hung out there. They didn’t seem to want to come back, it didn’t seem like a particularly good time for them while they were there, and certainly no one else from the evil group made it there (or seemed to want to go).
Once you pursue them into the wormhole to beat them up and bring them back (or at least one of them, I think you leave Guzma behind, but I’m not sure), you can continue with your true quest, to be the very best.
The next steps are challenging the newly constructed Pokémon league. I really like the touch that you are the regions first Pokémon champion, as opposed to dethroning and existing one. But as mentioned earlier, beware of the types (minor spoilers): Rock, Fighting, Ghost, Flying; Fire types not welcome. Oh and immediately after fighting a mysterious 5th battle (its super obvious but I won’t spoil) your victory is celebrated by an absurdly long cutscene. I swear I finished an episode of Brooklyn 99 during that cutscene (and coincidentally cannot tell you if it was as emotionally riveting as I assume they hoped it would be, pretty sure it wasn’t). Eventually you are given the choice by Lillie to go to the cave/ruins thing, a warning: This immediately throws you into a legendary Pokémon battle with Tapu Kaku. I have no idea if you can redo it later but I had to re-beat part of the Pokémon league cause I killed it and reflex kicked in (immediate restart).
Post-game is the Looker/Police quests, you need to find and catch Ultra Beasts, that about it, they are pretty strong and in specific locations around the islands. The special Beastballs you get for them look amazing, so there is that. Other than that I begin my Pokémon Completion hunt, to spend many hours of my commute in search of feebas.
But Here’s the Thing
Okay the cut scenes in this game are just too long. The end cut scene was literally a parade of characters coming by to drop references to their impact on the story in case you forgot, and I had forgotten. The Masked Royale is the Professor, all the captains did things, the Kahunas were important, but oh god it took so long.
I also didn’t like the Ultrabeast fetch quests; I now have 4 steel sword-y dudes, so that’s nice, but catching them all in a row wasn’t. They didn’t even bring us to new area’s or new major challenges like they did in X an Y.
I think the most important sticking point I had was the fact that the main characters age was referenced multiple times. The Pokémon protagonists are 11 years old. Normally you forget this fact, or you rationalize it by assuming that the 20-40 hours it takes to beat the game equate to months/years of in game time. At the end of the game you are the Pokémon champion, best trainer in the land, having defeated people who have dedicated their lives to training their Pokémon. This game makes it very clear you are the 11 year old best trainer in the land, implying that it took an 11 year old 40 hours (or at least less than a year) to beat the greatest trainers in the land, and to dismantle an evil organization. A fucking child, which I know helps explain things like how he (I) named my Salazzle “Salazzledazzle”, but these other people put their lives into training their Pokémon, did the same trials you did, and grew old doing it. An 11 year old sits on the nation’s throne, that’s the precedent; this is who is chosen to fight off legendary Pokémon and UltraBeasts. Can you imagine if a police force contracted an 11 year old to take care of the roaming monsters in the region?
The strongest individual in the Pokémon universe is an unsupervised 11 year old, and no game has ever made me aware of that fact like this one did.
Comments